ZOOLOGICAL LAWS 513 



the language of the conquered, even when they bring a certain number 

 of their women with them. 



We now come to undoubted cases where the language of the con- 

 queror has been able to get a firm foothold. From the time of the 

 plantation of Ulster, the advance of the English tongue, and con- 

 sequent decadence of the Irish, has steadily proceeded, for the settlers, 

 unlike Cromwell's Ironsides, brought with them women of their own 

 race and speech. Consequently their children grew up speaking Eng- 

 lish as their mothers' tongue. Yet even with such a basis the advance 

 of English amongst the Irish has been exceedingly slow. In the glens 

 of Antrim the Irish language still lingers on, whilst in Donegal, Con- 

 naught, Kerry, Cork and Waterford, English has not succeeded in 

 ousting completely the native language, though the former is the 

 language of the national schools, of the newspapers and of trade. 



The story of the establishment of English itself in Britain is just 

 the same as in Ulster. We know from Bede that the Angles who settled 

 in Britain left Holstein in large bodies, bringing with them their 

 wives and families, and leaving their old homes without inhabitant. 

 Having thus settled in solid masses in the east of Britain, they retained 

 fully their own tongue, impressed it upon their menials, and gradually, 

 as they extended their conquests westward over the island, English 

 became the language of the land. Yet in Wales the ancient speech 

 still flourishes. 



We may, therefore, conclude that the adoption by the conquered of 

 the language of the conqueror, even when it does take place, which is 

 but rarely, is a very slow and tedious process, although every advantage 

 is on the side of the invading tongue, and that when the native speech 

 gets a fair field, ^s in Wales, the language of the conqueror can make 

 little or no advance. 



Only the third possibility now is left — that one people can adopt 

 without conquest the language of another. But no example of such 

 can anywhere be found, although Europe presents numerous instances 

 to the contrary. There can be no stronger case than that of the Swiss 

 Eepublic, in which peoples with more than four kinds of language com- 

 bine for national defense and other advantages. Here, if anywhere, we 

 ought to find a gradual adoption by certain cantons of the language of 

 their neighbors. But, far from this being so, the German, French, 

 Koumansch and Italian cantons rigidly preserve their respective 

 mother-speeches. In the Austro-Hungarian Empire there is no tend- 

 ency observable on the part of either Magyars or Slavs to adopt Ger- 

 man; nay, the very opposite is the case. Again, the Finns have not 

 adopted either Swedish or Eussian, though partitioned between their 

 more powerful neighbors. 



To sum up, it seems that no nation readily adopts the language of 



